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The Banger Sisters opened with a bang in second place with $10.3 million.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a fat third with $10 million and a $124 million cume heading for $150 million.

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever >and The Four Feathers opened in a fourth place tie with a featherweight $7.1 million each.

Trapped, the weekend's other wide opening, placed tenth with a subdued $3.2 million.

Even with no huge openings, key films soared 41.5 percent over last year -- $75 million versus $53 million. The comparison is misleading, however, since ticket sales a year earlier were depressed in the wake of 9/11.

THE TOP TEN

MGM's PG-13 rated urban appeal comedy Barbershop held on to the top spot in its second week with a solid ESTIMATED $13.3 million (-36%) at 1,894 theaters (+289 theaters; $7,022 per theater). Its cume is approximately $38.9 million.

Directed by Tim Story, it stars Ice Cube, Anthony Anderson, Sean Patrick Thomas, Eve and Cedric The Entertainer.

Barbershop's average per theater was the highest for any film playing in wide release this weekend.

Focusing on the low budget Barbershop's good hold, a competing studio marketing president said the picture is clearly attracting mainstream moviegoers as well as its urban core audience. "What that says to me," he observed, "is that it's crossing over to young males -- not African-Americans, but just young males. You can't hold like that without that."

Fox Searchlight Pictures' R rated low budget comedy The Banger Sisters opened in second place to a sexy ESTIMATED $10.3 million at 2,736 theaters ($3,763 per theater).

Written and directed by Bob Dolman, it stars Goldie Hawn, Susan Sarandon and Geoffrey Rush.

"We're very, very pleased," Fox Searchlight distribution president Stephen Gilula said Sunday morning.

"Essentially, we more than grossed our production budget on opening weekend. For a film that's had a pretty narrow but very targeted audience to end up number two for the weekend, we're just thrilled."

Banger's launch, Gilula added, "is also a record for Searchlight. It's the biggest opening in Searchlight history. (The previous biggest) was a week ago with the $8 million for One Hour Photo. So two weeks in a row we set and broke our own records."

Asked if Searchlight will go any wider with Banger, Gilula replied, "I think we're as wide as we need to be. In fact, that's wider than we had intended. But the demand for the film was so high after we screened it for exhibitors that we went up to 2,700 (plus theaters).

"Originally, we thought we'd be in 2,300 to 2,500. But partly because (there are so) few films in the marketplace toward the end of the summer we had a lot of demand, so we went up that high. So we won't be adding theaters."

IFC Films' release of Gold Circle Films and HBO's PG rated romantic comedy blockbuster My Big Fat Greek Wedding was a close third, down one peg in its 23rd week with a still enviable ESTIMATED $10.01 million (-7%) at 1,853 theaters (+89 theaters; $4,501 per theater). Its cume is approximately $124.3 million, heading for $160 million in domestic theaters.

Wedding should break the $140.5 million record set by Artisan Entertainment's The Blair Witch Project as the domestic box office's biggest grossing independent film ever.

Directed by Joel Zwick, it stars Nia Vardalos and John Corbett.